Where the Asphalt Flowers Grow
by Nokomiss
Summary: None of Stephanie’s friends at school ever got to go places like this. Of course, most of their daddies didn’t escape from prison, either.


Title: Where the Asphalt Flowers Grow

Summary: None of Stephanie's friends at school ever got to go places like this. Of course, most of their daddies didn't escape from prison, either.

Characters: Stephanie Brown, Arthur Brown

Rating: PG

Word count: 4215

AN: My thanks to my beta, Rainpuddle13. Title taken from Shel Silverstein's "Where the Sidewalk Ends."

* * *

Stephanie was taking the rubbery grilled cheese sandwich she stole from the school cafeteria out of the microwave when her cartoon went off and the news came on.

The anchorwoman, who had the sort of bouncy Barbie hair Steph wanted, solemnly announced a Blackgate breakout (third one this month, the anchorman beside her snidely offered).

Her father's face was suddenly plastered across the snowy screen, along with two other greasy-looking men she'd met before her father's last unsuccessful crime spree.

"Arthur Brown,also known as The Cluemaster, is considered armed and dangerous. Any sightings should be reported immediately to the hotline..."

Stephanie sat down at the table, and carefully took a bite of her sandwich, which was even less appetizing now than it had been at lunch. Her mother was sleeping - passed out - on the couch again, but now Steph thinks maybe it's because her dad is on the run again instead of the call from the principal about that tiny little scuffle she'd had with Missy Evans on the monkey bars.

Missy shouldn't have called her white trash, Steph thought viciously, even though she feels a little bad about the sprained ankle Missy got when she pushed her off the top of the monkey bars.

The newscasters stop talking about her dad and footage from Metropolis is plastered across the screen. Steph, transfixed, watched Superman stop a helicopter from flying into one of the tall, shiny glass buildings.

She had asked her mom once if they could move to Metropolis, which looked so bright and nifty and had _Superman_, but her mom had just shook her head and told her they couldn't afford it.

"I'll get a job," Steph had offered. "I could be Superman's Robin!"

Her mom glanced around as if make sure her dad wasn't in earshot, even though he was gone - Steph wasn't supposed to talk about Batman or Robin around him - and then laughed. "Sweetheart, I don't think Superman needs a Robin, especially a little girl who can't fly."

Steph had pouted for nearly an hour after that, and had thought about building a set of wings, but she really wasn't that good at building stuff and besides, Batman was cooler anyway and he didn't fly. He'd put her daddy in jail, and when she went to visit him his eye had still been puffy and purple and his lip split and he'd yelled angrily when she, filled with awe, had asked what Batman had been like close up.

The newsclip had ended, and Steph reluctantly took another bite of her grilled cheese. The bread had gotten all moldy again and all the pans were dirty and piled in the sink, so it was all she's got.

A crashing sound from upstairs caused Steph to drop her sandwich. She looked around for somewhere to hide, trying to remember if she'd gotten too big to hide in the dryer like she used to.

"Goddamn it!" roared a familiar male voice upstairs. "Why is the..." His words trailed off into unintelligibility, and Steph wondered if she could manage to shake her mother awake.

A minute later, her father entered the kitchen, holding a bundled-up prison uniform in one hand and pulling on his denim jacket with the other.

"Did you climb in the window?" Steph asked curiously. She'd climbed i out /I hers before because she liked sitting on the roof, but had never thought of climbing into the house that way.

He patted her on the head as he walked past, but didn't answer her question.

"Aww, fuck," he said, staring at the TV on the counter, which was reminding viewers to be on the lookout for The Cluemaster. "They've got this on the news already?"

"A few minutes ago," Steph offered helpfully. "Right before a story about Superman."

Her dad ignored her in favor of slamming open the fridge door, and staring inside with a scowl. "Doesn't your momma ever go to the store?"

Steph took a sip of her water. "Sometimes."

"Hrmph," replied Arthur. He scooped up her grilled cheese and picked at it, scowling. "This is worse than prison food."

Steph shrugged. She'd never tried prison food, so she didn't know.

He looked at her for a second, then said, "Go put on your jacket."

"Why?" she asked warily.

"Because you're coming with me. I've got some work to do, and I can't stay here."

"But the cops are looking for you," she said.

"Exactly," he said. "This'll be one of the first places they look for me. You wanna talk to the cops while your mom's all passed out on the couch?"

"I want to stay here," Steph said petulantly.

"It'll be fine," he said. He looked at her closely, then kneeled down in front of her chair. He took one of her hands reassuringly. "There's nothing to worry about, Stephie. Even Gotham cops wouldn't shoot me in front of my kid."

Steph sighed, blowing her bangs away from her forehead like she'd seen one of her favorite characters do in a movie. "I was gonna watch cartoons."

"Go get your coat." She recognized the tone, accompanied by a faint memory of bruises that had taken weeks to fade completely, and scampered upstairs to get her jacket and shoved her feet into her sneakers.

When she got back downstairs, Arthur was coming out of the basement, brushing at the smears of dirt on his knees. The prison uniform was nowhere in sight.

"We're taking the bike," he said, pulling a black ski cap out of his jacket pocket and carefully stuffing all his blond hair in it.

Steph followed him to the garage, cheered considerably. She loved riding on the bike- it felt as much like flying as she ever had been, except for that time when she was four and jumped off the porch roof into her wading pool. Those few seconds of nothing but air around her before crashing to the ground had been thrilling.

Her dad lifted her and set her down on the back of the bike before climbing on himself, and she clutched the his denim jacket in both hands and let out a squeal when he kicked-started the bike, which roared like a rocket ship in their tiny garage.

She clutched even tighter as they pulled onto the road, pressing her face as close to her dad's back as she could with her helmet, and laughing as her hair blew up around her in the wind. Just like flying, she thought again.

They wove out of the suburbs and into Gotham proper, yards and trees fading into alleys and streetlights. The bike slowed some, and Steph loosened her grip on her father, leaning back a little, feeling daring as an acrobat as she let go with one hand and let it trail through the wind.

The streets got grimmer and grimier as they rode. Steph liked all the colorful graffiti that adorned the buildings, because they were the only spots of brightness here. The trees were dead and windows filthy, and even the people were sad-looking.

Finally Arthur pulled the bike into an alley, and parked it in a tiny, hidden lot behind a squat brick building.

Steph wobbled a bit when she climbed off the bike, but she didn't need any help. She followed behind her father nervously as he banged on a heavy steel door, which cracked open after a minute. A fat man with bright pink cheeks - just like the Santa at the mall, only without the fake beard - ushered them inside.

"Figured you might be turning up," he said, voice squeaky like a cartoon mouse. Steph giggled, and he grinned at her. "And you brought your little princess, too." He looked back at her father, and his smile disappeared. "That better be all you brought with you. If the cops come busting in-"

"No one followed me," Arthur said.

"Fucking hope so," the fat man said. "I'm not putting my ass on the line for you."

He motioned them past, and Steph followed her dad closely as they walked through a storage room with barrels and cases of booze stacked along the walls. They went through another heavy door and were in a dark, smokey bar. A crowd of men were around a table in one corner, and a few old men and ladies with big hair were scattered throughout the room. Her dad lead her straight to the bar sitting down on a barstool.

Steph clamored up onto the next barstool, and ran her fingers through her hair. The top was smooshed down from the helmet and the bottom was wild from the wind, and she thought maybe the man in the back had been making fun of her when he called her a princess.

Her father ordered a drink, and then turned to her. "You can get whatever you want, Stephie."

Maybe she _was_ a princess today. Usually they'd order for her so that she didn't accidentally ask for something expensive.

The bartender poured her father a shot, and Steph thought about her half-eaten grilled cheese sandwich. One of the scruffy men from the corner sat on the other side of her father, and they began a hushed conversation of the sort she had learned meant that she wasn't supposed to interrupt.

"What do you want, honey?"

Steph looked up at the woman behind the bar, who was wearing a pretty red top and was smiling at her like they were already friends.

"Do you have mashed potatoes?" she asked hopefully.

The lady laughed. "I think I can scrounge you up some. Would you like a Cherry Coke, too?"

Steph nodded, and a few moments later a big glass was in front of her, with a straw and a little paper umbrella and real cherries sticking out of it.

She felt like a grownup, sitting at the bar with an umbrella in her drink. None of her friends at school ever got to go places like this. Of course, most of their daddies didn't escape from prison, either.

She took the paper umbrella out and twirled it a few times. It was yellow and red and pretty, so she stuck it in her jacket pocket so she could play with it with her Barbie.

"Cathy, you get those boys in the back their drinks yet?" called the bartender. He reminded her of Bill, who drove the ferry sometimes from the harbor to the visitor's entrance of Blackgate. He was her favorite ferry pilot, because he would let her steer while he talked to her mom, who Steph thought liked him best, too, because she always laughed a lot around him.

"Hold your horses, I'm getting the sweetie her food," called the woman, and a minute later she came in from the back with a bowl of mashed potatoes and gravy.

"Thanks," Steph remembered to say before digging in.

She paused when her stomach started getting full. Arthur was looking at her with a fond half-smile she rarely saw. "Better slow down, midget. You'll get a stomachache."

"Will not," she said, and took another large bite to prove it.

He laughed. "Yeah, you got your daddy's guts. Use 'em well, kid."

Steph beamed at him.

"So how'd you get across the river? There's a reason they put Blackgate on an island, you know," said the greasy man on Arthur's left.

Arthur turned back to his buddy. "Took the ferry like anyone else. And that's all I'm saying about that. I found an out of that place and I ain't letting anyone else in on it."

"Selfish bastard," he replied good-naturedly.

"You rascal," laughed the bartender. "So let's hear it. How was the mighty Cluemaster felled?"

Arthur didn't scowl and snap like he would when Steph brought up one of his arrests. Instead, he grinned and said, "It took the best to bring me down, Henry. You should know that."

Henry let out a snort. "More likely Batman was out taking a shit and got bored, Artie-boy."

Her dad took a sip of his beer, and shook his head. "I'm a credible threat to society, turns out. Not like you losers."

The two men he'd been plotting with jeered him good-naturedly, but no one got upset like Steph thought they would. They were having fun, she thought, and they seemed genuinely impressed that her daddy had been arrested by Batman himself.

She took another sip of her Coke while her dad detailed his encounter with Batman in ways she'd never heard before.

She felt a warm burst of pride when he described standing up to Batman, telling him, "I've got a kid to feed. You want us to starve?"

Batman had heard of her, she thought excitedly. Not her name or anything, but _the_ Batman knew she existed.

She drank some more Coke, smiling as the bubbles matched the excited feeling in her tummy.

"Then the bat bastard attacked me, like a madman! Practically foaming at the mouth. Probably has rabies, s'how he got the name," Arthur continued. "I told him, hold up, there! I'll go with you peaceably, see if we can't get this worked out."

The men at the bar let out a loud burst of laughter, and Steph crinkled her brow. Batman wouldn't foam at the mouth. He was a hero, the best of all the heroes except maybe Superman, not an wild animal. Steph knew her daddy didn't like Batman, but he'd _met _ him. He had to know that Batman was smarter than some rodent.

"But he kept pummeling at me. I wasn't going to fight back, at first, but after a minute of it I was scared for my life! I ain't no pussy, but that monster was one crazy-ass motherfucker," Arthur continued.

"Ain't that the truth," the guy on the far left muttered, rubbing his wrist like it was sore.

"You're preaching to the fucking choir," the other man added.

Steph scowled at her empty bowl. It didn't make sense. Her dad said that Batman had beat him within an inch of his life, but when her mom took her to visit him in jail he'd only had a puffy eye and a split lip. She'd never seen anyone in real life beat within an inch of their life, but on TV it was a lot more gruesome than that. Arthur had done worse to her mom, a bunch of times, than Batman had done to him.

She looked back up at her dad, who was laughing and looked happier here than he ever did at home, and thought, _Liar_.

"I hafta go to the bathroom," she said, sliding off her barstool.

"Right through there," Cathy said, pointing.

Along the way she bumped into a huge, smelly man who was chewing on a toothpick. He grumbled at her. She didn't pay him any mind, though, because he didn't have mean eyes. She pushed open the door to the ladies room, which had the silhouette of a naked lady on it, and looked around cautiously.

There was no one there, so she experimentally dragged the trash can underneath the tiny window, and balanced carefully on top, careful not to step on the swinging plastic lid. She peered out the window, and could see the alley they arrived in.

She wished she were home, watching cartoons and playing with her Barbie, who she'd just made a superhero cape for out of an old sock and Lego supervillains to fight. (She was gonna have to make a Cluemaster one, short and squat so Barbie could kick it out of the way to get to the real villains.) She wished her daddy hadn't broken out of stupid jail. She wished that she were big enough or brave enough to take the bike and drive off.

She climbed down off the trash can and washed her hands.

When she got back to the bar, no one was talking about Batman anymore, or her father's arrest. Instead they were talking about women, and Steph crinkled her nose.

Cathy took pity on her and lead her to a corner booth. She set down a few sheets of paper and a pen, and said, "I've got a boy, so I know how bored you must be. You can occupy yourself here."

"Thanks," Steph said, picking up the pen. She didn't know what to draw, so she made a few pretty swirls along the edge of the paper. Her pen caught into a groove on the table, and she scooted the paper away to see some kid had carved his initials there. She peeked around, and no one was paying any attention to her, so she carefully drew an S and a B to the table near it, and then added a little heart and a flower because it looked plain.

She looked back at the bar, and Arthur was glancing back at her. She gave a little half-wave, part of her wanting him to come over and draw with her and the other part of her happy that he was over there, where she didn't have to listen to him lie anymore.

Steph sometimes lied, but she tried not to about things that mattered to people who mattered. She wanted to matter to her dad. She jabbed her pen onto the paper, making a jagged streak, and wished that he hadn't broken out of prison. That he hadn't taken her along with him tonight, because he wasn't paying much attention to her, even if he did let her order whatever she wanted.

Arthur turned back to his cohorts, and Steph drew a skyscraper on her paper. She spent a long time adding lots of windows, so it looked real. She'd never been into one of the skyscrapers that she'd craned her neck trying to see the top of from the ground, because only fancy people got to go in them, but she thought one day she might get to see what the world looked like from up there.

Kids whose parents worked there were probably never ignored. She didn't know any, but she'd passed them before in the mall and they always looked happy and had lots of bags, while she didn't. When she was a grownup, she'd do everything she could to make sure her kids were happy, because she hated this gnawing feeling in her tummy, like she'd just fallen down and wanted to cry, but didn't know if she was hurt yet.

On top of the skyscraper she added a tiny Batman, and beside him an even smaller Robin that she purposefully made the hair too long on and didn't color it in with the black ink.

Then she felt silly, and carefully scribbled them both out. Her dad would just get mad if he saw it, anyway. She looked back at him.

Arthur was in a loud, animated conversation, and didn't look back over at her once during the whole time she stared, which felt like forever. She was sure she'd been watching carefully for at least fifteen minutes.

Her coke was empty except for the icky watered-down remains of the ice, and she'd drawn over all her pieces of paper. There were lots more people here now than when they'd arrived- all the other booths and tables were full, and loud men were crowded around the bar while pretty ladies wearing clothes like her Barbie doll had come with crowded around them, smoking and laughing.

Lots of them seemed happy to see her dad, congratulated him on his escape and swore up and down they wouldn't mention they'd seen him. Steph wondered how many of them were liars, too.

She yawned, and laid down on her side in the cracked vinyl booth, stretching her feet out so they were flat against the wall. She had to curl up her legs some so that her head was still on the bench, and she traced the cracks in the black vinyl with one finger. The yellow stuffing showed through the white threads, and she picked at it some, wondering if another kid or maybe just some rats had caused the little torn crescents in the foam.

A heavy weight settled across her, and she looked up to see her dad had shed his denim jacket and laid it across her like a blanket.

"You alright here?" he asked. He was swaying slightly, and he patted her roughly on the head.

"Uh-huh," Steph mumbled.

She snuggled in closer, breathing in the jacket's familiar smell- motor oil from where it had been left in the garage while he was in jail, beer, cigarette smoke and just a little of that harsh boy scent she associated with her dad.

The bar was loud and smelly, but she was toasty in her booth. Stephanie drifted off to the raucous laughter and loud voices of the people around her.

"Sweetheart?"

Someone shook her shoulder gently.

"Mmmph?" Steph managed, cracking open her eyes and seeing nothing but the scarred, gunk-encrusted underbelly of a table.

"Sweetie, have you been here all night?"

Steph sat up, and saw Cathy leaning over her, limp grey rag in one hand. She looked around, but the bar was empty.

"Where's my dad?" Steph asked. The jacket slid off her as she kneeled in the seat and looked around the bar, a sinking feeling in her tummy.

"He left hours ago," Cathy said, patting her on the hand. "I'm sorry, sweetie, I thought you left with him."

Steph climbed out of the booth, and looked to the front, where pale light streamed through the dirty glass. "What time is it?"

"Almost six," Cathy replied. "Should I call your mother?"

Steph shook her head. "She's probably at work," she lied, thinking of her mother snoring on the couch, oblivious to the world.

"I can take you to school," Cathy offered. "Will you have a way home?"

"I walk home," Steph said. Her tummy growled, and she blushed.

"How about we go get some pancakes first?" Cathy said kindly. "I'm pretty hungry, too. It was a long night."

She held out her hand. Steph looked at it, the calloused fingers and the shiny ring with its fleck of a diamond. It looked just like her mother's.

She grabbed the denim jacket off the seat and pulled it on, awkwardly folding the sleeves up so her hands could poke out. She took Cathy's hand, and went out the front door into the blinding morning light.

Halfway to the diner, Cathy stopped and pushed Steph at a phone booth. "Call home, just to make sure your mama knows you're alright. I know I'd be worried sick if my boy didn't call."

"Fine," Steph muttered, and dialed the number. Cathy dropped a few coins into the slot, and stepped away so Steph could talk in private.

After a two rings, her mother picked up, sounding breathless. "Steph, honey, is that you?"

"Yeah. Hi, Mom," she replied.

"Where have you been?" Her mom sounded awfully worried.

"Dad took me with him," Steph said. "But then I fell asleep in the booth and he forgot me. But Cathy's taking me for pancakes and to school."

"Who's..." Her mom stopped, and took a deep breath. "I was worried sick! You were gone, and I didn't know where you were, and your father got arrested, _again_..."

"He got caught? By who?" Steph asked, thinking, _he deserved it_.

"Don't get all excited on me, but Batman nabbed him early this morning," her mom replied. "Are you really getting to school alright?"

Steph didn't answer immediately, she was too excited. Batman probably heard Arthur talking bad about him, and that's how he'd caught him so quickly! Maybe he had superpowers after all, like Superman, special ones that let him hear what people were saying about him. If he hadn't left her at the bar, then she could have _met_ Batman himself!

"Was Robin there? Aww, how'd I miss the chance to meet Robin _and_ Batman?" Steph said excitedly into the phone.

"Stephanie, you shouldn't be excited that your father got put in jail!" her mother admonished.

"But he was in jail to start off with! And I almost got to meet Batman!" Steph replied, bouncing on her toes.

"Well, you're clearly in fine health," her mother said. "Don't be late for school. I don't want _another_ phone call. We're going to have words when you get home this afternoon, missy."

Apparently a prison break hadn't been enough to make her mom forget about that call from the principal.

"Fine," she muttered.

"I love you," her mom said.

"Love you too," she replied, hanging up. She looked back up at Cathy. "There. She knows I'm okay."

Cathy gave her a sad smile.

"Can I get chocolate chip pancakes?" Steph asked. "With whipped cream?"

"Anything you want."

Steph skipped ahead. Somehow the neighborhood didn't seem as dangerous this morning, now that she knew that superheroes had been here. The jacket was sliding off her shoulder, and she tugged it back up around her, and decisively didn't think about her daddy being hauled back into Blackgate, having to eat his icky prison food while she had pancakes.

The sunlight sparkled off the dirty storefronts, and Steph smiled.


End file.
